More Like This

Quick Reference

Anglo-American architectural consultancy founded by Jan Kaplicky and David Nixon in 1979 to synthesize ecology, popular architecture, and technology in projects such as low-cost shelters, light-weight homes capable of being moved from site to site, and ‘green’ environmentally friendly office-blocks. They designed crew-quarters for NASA, the US Space Agency, in the 1980s. From 1989 Future Systems has been based in London, with Prague-born Kaplicky (1937–2009) and London-born Amanda Levete (1955– ) as partners. Later work included the Selfridge's store, part of the Bull Ring redevelopment scheme, Birmingham (2003), with a reptilian exterior covered with anodised aluminium discs, rejecting the scale, materials, and massing of adjoining buildings. See biomorph; blobismus. In 2005 the firm won the competition to design the Maserati Museum, Modena, Italy, which will have a large, dominant blue roof and a curving façade, which are supposed to pay tribute to the bonnet and radiator of the Ferrari, a connection that perhaps will prove visually tenuous.